


two molecules of hydrogen, one of oxygen

by strayphoenix



Series: How Far We've Come [3]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Supermartian, nothing but fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9299741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strayphoenix/pseuds/strayphoenix
Summary: Water’s just another element unless you’ve never had it.





	

There is no water on Mars.

The fact had registered in Conner’s head, lodged in there, actually, courtesy of the genomorphs responsible for his education. It was barren of liquid on the surface presently. Once upon a time, possibly, according to the science that was Wally’s religion, it had been a water world like Earth.

But he hasn’t ever dwelled on the fact until M’gann slips from his side at some ungodly hour of the night, her mind trembling with a sudden curiosity.

“What’s wrong?” he asks telepathically.

She takes his hands in hers and pulls, grinning. “Let’s go swimming.”

Conner piques an eyebrow but allows her to pull him to the door. “Now?”

“Yes, _now!_ ” she giggles aloud, the echoes tickling in his head. “It’ll be exciting!”

She says it with that same voice of trying a new recipe or going to a new restaurant. But Conner is less sure, less willing to blindly wade out into the black water stretching before them. It was inviting enough during the day, it looked like a black marble tomb now.

But M’gann doesn’t register his worry or outright ignores it. She peels his shirt off herself and tosses it back at him, a sunflower yellow bikini materializing underneath, as she giddily sprints to the water. Ready to dive in, ready to jump, fearless.

Conner just watches, bemused, as she comes to her senses and a skidding halt, a few inches shy of the softly breaking waves. She giggles at herself— _Hello, Megan! _—__ and wades into the waves at a more careful pace. Gently kicking at the arriving waves as she makes her way into waist deep water.

“You coming?” she teases, flicking her hair and her eyes over her shoulder.

He rolls his eyes, fighting his amusement as he tosses his shirt—her night wear—onto a nearby rock. As an afterthought, he slips out of his boxers and tosses them on the rocks as well. It was just the two of them anyway. Well, the two of them and the ocean. At least having him around might deter any shark attempting to snack on her.

M’gann dunks under, blowing bubbles, as he wades towards her in the ice cold water, doing his best to ignore how it lightly numbs his skin, wondering what on earth could have brought this on.

“Has it ever taken you a really long time to realize you’ve been given a gift?” she thinks at him from under the waves, an answer to his overheard question.

The cold water makes him think of Belle Reve, of her, of having to have his emotions explained to him by a kid made of ice, and he grins at the waves. “That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

He feels her swimming up behind him under the water and whirls around to catch her by the shoulders just as she splashes out to scare him. She squirts water through her teeth at him anyway, laughing into his head. Conner kisses her to stop the stream.

Belatedly, he notices her skin is a soft human pink now. And it’s all she’s wearing.

M’gann breaks the kiss with a small sigh, allowing Conner to envelop her in his arms, her streaming hair tucking under his chin.

“There’s…no water on Mars,” she says after a time, in a tone of thought she reserved for talking about her home or her childhood. It’s a particular timbre: sadness mixed with longing mixed with shame for longing at all. He lets her talk.

“Well, there is water…but it’s rationed and nothing at all like this…” She catches stray bead of water as they run down his shoulder. “And here I am with this great big ocean as my next door neighbor and I have to wait for the sun or my friends to use it?” She laughs, a tiny sound. “ _Hello_ , Megan…”

Conner rubs small circles between her shoulder blades. He knows Mars is full of terrible memories for her, things he won’t ever ask her to explain or try to understand because he sees what they do to her, how they make her self-critical and insecure, clamming up behind the wall of Megan Morse, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Fearing— _expecting _—__ everything she loves to disappear if she forgets for a second to tend to it. Waiting for him to come to his senses any second and walk out of her life, now that he knows what she is.

He swallows his anger at the fourth rock from the sun and tells her, “M’gann, the ocean isn’t going to evaporate overnight. I mean,” he tries for a joke, “Kaldur would tell us if it was going to, right? It’s kind of his home…”

She shakes a little in his arms, and if not for their mental connection, Conner wouldn’t be able to tell whether she was laughing or crying.

“I love you,” she murmurs aloud. The emotions attached echo like orchestration in his head.

He kisses her hair and holds her a little tighter, sending everything back to her tenfold.

Much later, lying on the beach coated with sand, staring at the night sky with a green slumbering Martian using his shoulder as a pillow, Conner wonders for the first time what Krypton might have looked like. Was it barren on the surface, like Mars? Did it have any oceans?

He wishes he could tell her about it either way.

**Author's Note:**

> Um, I haven’t FOUND any other SuperMartian skinny dipping fics out there, even though it’s kind of a no brainer for me that this is something totally in their characters to do. Anyone let me know if I’m not alone.
> 
> I'm adding all my old YJ fics to AO3 from FF and Tumblr just so I can keep track of all of them. I don't use this particular writing style much any more, but I'd appreciate any and all kudos and comments regardless.


End file.
